Red

The classroom full of cotton wool
pretending to be clouds.
Yoghurt pots, plastic milk –
not red tops of my childhood step –
but parents’ fresh recycle dump.

Handwritten, on the pin-board fixed,
creative weekly scripts,
grammar, spelling ignored,
(complaint not split infinitives) –
so passing heads drink in the words.

But “I’d of” evicting “I’d have”
is thought permissible –
red biro stunts their growth.
Yet eyes that see, in bolls, the sky,
frame freely, but not what rules write.

Application forms, interviews,
ask rarely, string the vault,
play game of ten-pin bowls –
this employment entails far more,
right spelling only enters here.

Red carpet of self-dignity
lies path around the door.
Red chit to the exit,
I would, more obvious, of thought;
please me too, bind, to learn, unsplit.